When Gordon Strachan paid Hearts £2m for Antti Niemi in the summer of 2002, he was acquiring a goalkeeper of considerable experience – across the Leagues of Finland, Denmark and Scotland – who was still only 30. So it was perhaps a question of when, rather than if, he would replace the 35 year-old Paul Jones.

In the sixth Premiership game of the season, a mistake by Jones handed West Brom the only goal of the match at The Hawthorns and Niemi pretty much took over from there.

It was immediately obvious that here was one of those ’keepers who could “make himself big” in and around his goal. Added to which, his anticipation and reflexes, plus an unflappable aura, made him a most commanding presence. That presence was exaggerated by his appearance. He seemed almost to glow, with his Nordic hair-colouring and his sometimes florid choice of kit.

So there was something paradoxical about the way he arrived unobtrusively, one afternoon in March 2003, to make his presence felt on the edge of the opponents’ penalty area. Trailing Fulham 2-1, in stoppage-time, the Saints had a corner. When the ball was half-cleared, there was Antti, standing all alone, with time and temperament to chest the ball down and then volley it against the bar – for Michael Svensson to score from the rebound. Strachan thought it “incredible that no-one seemed to notice a man with big gloves, blond hair and a bright orange shirt.”

For his part, Antti seemed relieved to have hit the bar.

“For me to score would have been too much,” he felt. “I wouldn’t know how to celebrate.” 

Two months later, he found a novel way to celebrate – if that’s the word –at the Millennium Stadium, following Southampton’s defeat by Arsenal. Having torn a calf muscle during the game – causing him to be the first goalkeeper to be substituted from the bench during an FA Cup Final – Antti joined in the team’s lap of honour by riding on a team-mate’s shoulders.

A series of injuries and a couple of operations limited him to 28 Premier League games in each of the next two seasons, but Antti clearly remained the first-choice amid a turnover of managers and was – in the assessment of goalkeeping coach, David Coles, among the world’s Top Five ’keepers. When the Saints were relegated in 2005, there was plenty of speculation that a Premiership club would deem him too good to be playing in the Championship, but it seems that only Celtic made a bid.

So Antti played on, hardly missing a game until January, when Fulham became the club that took him back to the Premier League. As he explained to Jeremy Wilson, who selected Antti as his only ’keeper among his Cult Heroes, the motive, at the age of 33, was to get back to the top flight. But the sacking of Coles, when George Burley arrived with his own coaching team, made it “a bit easier” to leave Southampton.

Antti’s time at Craven Cottage was beset with injuries. In September 2008, a wrist injury that would not heal obliged him to announce his retirement. Within a year, however, he had signed a 12-month contract with Premiership Portsmouth. Even though Pompey fielded as many as three ’keepers in that relegation season, Antti was never one of them. But it seems that he was a well-paid fourth-choice – to the tune of almost £450,000.

The holder of 67 international caps, Antti has since been a goalkeeping coach in his native Finland – for the national team from 2010 and, latterly, for HJK Helsinki, as well. He did spend one more season in the UK however when he joined Brighton then in the Championship and being managed by his fellow Finn Sammi Hyypia.